Samantha in the bracken

                                   (A single click on the picture will make it larger.)

Walking on Tiptoe
     by Ted Kooser

Long ago we quit lifting our heels
like the others—horse, dog, and tiger—
though we thrill to their speed
as they flee. Even the mouse
bearing the great weight of a nugget
of dog food is enviably graceful.
There is little spring to our walk,
we are so burdened with responsibility,
all of the disciplinary actions
that have fallen to us, the punishments,
the killings, and all with our feet
bound stiff in the skins of the conquered.
But sometimes, in the early hours,
we can feel what it must have been like
to be one of them, up on our toes,
stealing past doors where others are sleeping,
and suddenly able to see in the dark.

Ted Kooser, from Delights and Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, 2004, Kindle location 50.

The picture is of a granddaughter in the path through the ferns that my oldest daughter had mowed before her family's visit. That's our beloved Michigan house at the edge of the woods. As I took the picture, I was shouting at her not to go into the ferns; I thought I might lose her!